[HN Gopher] Qanat ___________________________________________________________________ Qanat Author : vinnyglennon Score : 205 points Date : 2023-11-11 17:18 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org) (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org) | chis wrote: | Crucial scrabble word | kristianp wrote: | I came by to say this. You'd want to know about "qi" and "qat" | too of course. | eganist wrote: | Related ancient Persian technology: the yakhchal | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l) (a.k.a the ice | pit). | | We still use the same word in farsi for refrigerators today. | pvg wrote: | We still use half of the same word in English! 'yakh' and 'ice' | are cognates. | | https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%DB%8C%D8%AE | jahnu wrote: | I visited several of these things in Yazd. Super fascinating | technology (and the city in general too). | inductive_magic wrote: | Wonderful video which is somewhat related: | https://youtu.be/twAP3buj9Og?si=muhCC08RsFzofObB | archon1410 wrote: | It seems the video is making rounds yet again--it was also | recommended to me by the algorithm a few days ago. | guwop wrote: | amazing vid! | pciexpgpu wrote: | This entire thread is fantastic and a great learning | opportunity. Sent me spiraling through Wikipedia pages. This | video is really great too! | extensis wrote: | Video from Asianometry about Iran's water problems, mentioning | quanat: https://youtu.be/watch?v=aaEhNTpvEN8 | xeonmc wrote: | What a coincidence, recently saw it on Asianometry's video about | the Iran water crisis. | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaEhNTpvEN8 | brabel wrote: | > By 400 BCE, Persian engineers had mastered the technique of | storing ice in the middle of summer in the desert. | | The ingenuity of ancient people cannot be overstated. Some of us | think that before around 1800, everyone still lived in primitive | conditions... I guess this is an awesome counterpoint. | ben_w wrote: | Now I'm wondering if the sum total of all inventions prior to | 1800 is more or less than the total since 2000, to pick a | random year with no particular reason for the choice. | | And how would you weight the importance of the inventions? | | I think ice is nice -- but autoclaves, antibiotics, and | anaesthesia during surgery are much more important. | hnbad wrote: | "Ice is nice" is severely understating the importance of | refrigeration. The ability to preserve fresh foods is easily | up there with penicilin. | woodruffw wrote: | These kinds of comparisons are category errors: you don't get | to autoclaves and antibiotics without the civilization-level | changes that get you irrigation and ice in summer. | ben_w wrote: | I don't deny that, my claim is more of "what counts as | 'primitive conditions'?" | pazimzadeh wrote: | They had antibiotics. Democedes used apples fermented in hay | to produce something which contained penicillin when he | performed the first known masectomy of Darius' wife Atossa | | I can't find the source right now but it's similar to | Peruvian Tocosh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocosh | KineticLensman wrote: | > Now I'm wondering if the sum total of all inventions prior | to 1800 is more or less than the total since 2000 | | Not sure why you have the gap between 1800 and 2000. But the | number of things 'invented' before 1800 is massive in terms | of the broad categories of things we consider essential to | life e.g. (in no particular order) fire, transport, cooking, | metal working, agriculture, animal husbandry, buildings, | weapons, health care, books, paintings, music, optics, etc. | There are very few things after 2000 of such importance. | | I suspect that if you had a single cut-off at 1800, 'before' | might still win, if we stick to these high-level categories, | rather than, say, patent applications. | jcranmer wrote: | Your question is essentially unknowable, as the definition of | invention is unclear, and we have no hope of estimating | quantity with anything like the precision we have with modern | recordkeeping (we can't estimate how many patents would have | been produced in the 10th century had the modern patent | system existed back then). Recall that there's a lot of | innovation in the "little things"; note that a parallel post | is talking about different shapes of spearheads, and each of | those variations would definitely correspond to a new patent | in the modern patent system. At the same time, most written | sources throughout history are from elites, who give very | little thought to what the working classes are doing, and | thus tend to ignore innovation that does exist. | | My gut instinct is that innovation rate throughout history is | largely constant on a per-capita basis, although I would | admit that probably some industries are more or less | innovative at various stages or in history. Through that | lens, the fact that you're looking at >10x total person-years | pre-1800 compared to post-2000 means that I'd feel rather | comfortable opining that there were more total innovations | before 1800 than after 2000. | vacuity wrote: | It's weird to me how compressed recent history actually is. | Unix was 1970, LISP was 1960, the US Civil Rights Act was 1964. | The Ottoman Empire was dissolved in the 1920s. At the same | time, there's already so much on the Internet. The iPhone was | released in 2007. | zabzonk wrote: | also mentioned in "Dune", the novel, along with other | arabic/persian words. | dr_dshiv wrote: | The tunnel of Eupalinos is also an interesting reference. From | before 550bc on the island of Samos, it was an irrigation tunnel | through a mountain. They started digging on both sides and | managed to meet in the middle just 60cm off. Pythagoras was just | a boy at that time, but I like to think he was influenced. | miohtama wrote: | Qanat will be history soon. Iran, like West USA, has exploited | available water resources and there is simply no water left. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity_in_Iran | startages wrote: | Qanat is an Arabic word which translates to "Canal", but it's a | little more traditional and made to transfer water for long | distances between a source of water and an agriculture field for | irrigation. | dalbasal wrote: | How sloped are water tables, typically? | SoapSeller wrote: | Also see Seville attempt to cool public spaces using modern | variant: | | https://cartujaqanat.com/ | aidenn0 wrote: | I first encountered this concept in a Sierra Adventure game: | | https://youtu.be/rd-epKNOo0U?t=3049 | nagonago wrote: | A nearby shopping center used to be called Qanat until it got | bought out and renamed to the very generic (Corporation) Square a | few years ago. Everyone still just calls it Qanat because it's | such a cool word, with an interesting history! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-11 23:00 UTC)